CRITIC'S NOTEBOOK; A Home That Jazz Can Call Its Own

By BEN RATLIFF

Published: October 15, 2004

Correction Appended

FOR many months, Wynton Marsalis has written in a spiral-bound red notebook. The notes, in a small, neat pencil script, deal with how to create the new $128 million performing arts complex for Jazz at Lincoln Center, of which he is the artistic director.

''A. Celebrate the timeless qualities of jazz,'' begins the first page. ''B. Highlight past glories which need not be altered. C. Reinvigorate songs which carry the identity of this music. D. Establish the importance of high-level improvisation in all styles. E. Feature what we have done and will do. F. Integration of styles, generations and forms. G. Use ensembles of differing sizes. H. Focus on music of New Orleans, 20's and after the 50's.''

The notes reflect Mr. Marsalis's cast of mind: he starts with grand theories and gradually translates them into mundane details. Ultimately, that philosophy has shaped the programming for the inaugural season of Jazz at Lincoln Center's three new theaters, which begins on Monday. (PBS will cover the event live.)

It will be an eclectic season -- radical in parts by Jazz at Lincoln Center's own standards, and predictable in others. But above all it will be a demonstration of the possibilities of the new spaces.

For the first night -- which is also Mr. Marsalis's 43rd birthday -- he took a sharp turn away from programming what's currently hot, influential or venerated in jazz. ''It's more a celebration of the human side of the music,'' Mr. Marsalis said recently as he sat, with the notebook in his lap, eating takeout near the 50-foot-tall glass window overlooking Central Park in the Allen Room, one of the theaters in the new complex.

Mr. Marsalis chose as the name of Monday's opening concert, and as its theme, ''One Family of Jazz.'' Aside from appearances by musicians like Abbey Lincoln, Tony Bennett, the saxophonist Joe Lovano and the violinist Mark O'Connor -- and an opening fanfare composed by Slide Hampton -- the concert will reinforce the notions of jazz musicians as an extended family and Jazz at Lincoln Center as a house in which to hold a reunion. The concert will include performances by Mr. Marsalis's father, Ellis, and his brothers Branford, Delfeayo and Jason, as well as the musically inclined parents of the members of the Lincoln Center Jazz Orchestra.

Sounds great: Team Jazz trots onto the field. The parents of the musicians in the Lincoln Center Jazz orchestra. The family of jazz. And yet it takes confidence to propose all this for the opening of the first concert hall built specifically for jazz. For argument's sake, another way of planning the opening concerts might have been as simple as invoking the gods: Wayne Shorter. Ornette Coleman. Keith Jarrett. Herbie Hancock. Sonny Rollins.

There would have been practical considerations, of course. Mr. Jarrett's manager, Steve Cloud, said last week that had he been asked to play, Mr. Jarrett would have declined on the grounds that he has good working relationships with Carnegie Hall and the New Jersey Performing Arts Center, and generally plays only in theaters with at least 2,500 seats. (Mr. Jarrett's very different views of what constitutes the jazz tradition might have gotten in the way, too.)

Aspects of a Vision

But still, the opening concert, and the rest of the three-week opening festival -- through Nov. 5 -- is a way of quickly projecting Jazz at Lincoln Center's own style onto a much greater canvas. And as the season progresses, the programming seeks to demonstrate the broad potential of the organization's new physical spaces.

No longer will it be squatting in someone else's territory, as it was at Alice Tully Hall and Avery Fisher Hall. Now Jazz at Lincoln Center can create concerts with a much greater sense of freedom in the practical aspects of scheduling and staging than it could in the past. The new complex, within the Time Warner Center at Columbus Circle, includes three performance spaces: the Allen Room, a 310- to 550-seat amphitheater-style hall designed to allow for performances without amplification; the 1,100- to 1,231-seat Rose Theater; and Dizzy's Club Coca-Cola, a nightclub that seats 140.

Some of the concerts in Jazz at Lincoln Center's 2004-05 season, its 14th as a year-round producer of jazz concerts and educational programming, clearly show Mr. Marsalis's thumbprint.

Representing the early-90's-period Marsalis, when he gained a reputation as the protector of jazz tradition and history, there is ''The Duke and the Count'' (Oct. 25 in the Allen Room), a program of works by two of his major influences, Basie and Ellington -- including the suite ''Black, Brown and Beige.'' It may not be the sexiest-looking program on the list, but this is the kind of concert that the Lincoln Center Jazz Orchestra probably does best. It sheds light on the inner workings of Ellington and Basie's music, the way those bandleaders arranged and composed for maximum impact. To hear that music in the smaller of the theaters, without amplification, will be even more remarkable.

Correction: October 22, 2004, Friday
An article in Weekend last Friday about the new complex of Jazz at Lincoln Center at Time Warner Center referred imprecisely to the Brazilian musician Hermeto Pascoal, who is to play on Oct. 29 and 30. He is visually impaired but not blind.